This little guy is a friend of our son and daughter in-law. Rowan was in a few weeks ago for his six month portraits – have you ever seen such an expressive face?! This slide show gives you an idea of our typical six month baby session for those clients that are part of our Bebe Steps portrait club.

The music for the slide show is used by permission from Sister Song. If you’d like to purchase a CD of beautiful lullaby music  – each song personalized with your child’s name – visit their website at: http://www.sistersong.com/index-old.html

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Emily was in last week for her portraits – she wanted some fall color for her outdoor images. I like the light in this image – a gloomy fall day (what day isn’t this year) – made for a soft look for a pretty girl.

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. . . but noooo, I had to wear this one with the dog on it.”

Madeline is a Baby Plan graduate that came for her two year portraits last week. She also brought along older brother and Mom and Dad for a family portrait. It takes Maddie a while to warm up but by the end of the session, with Mom and Dad chasing her, we got some great smiles.

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Back in the late 80′ and early 90’s I owned a real estate appraisal firm. Interest rates were at all time lows (for that period in history) and the mortgage refinancing business was crazy – and residential appraisers along with it. It was common for me to be at the computer writing appraisals until two or three in the morning.

If I complained about having to work so hard my Dad was a big one for saying, “Got to make hay while the sun shines!” (he was retired) I always felt if he said it one more time I was going to strangle him with my tape measure. (not really of course)

Late summer as a senior portrait photographer is kinda like the appraisal business. We were crazy busy all summer creating fun images and now I have the orders to work on. It means endless hours behind the computer, removing blemishes, softening eye bags and “popping” the eyes. Please don’t mis-understand, I’m not complaining. After all – you gotta make hay while the sun shines.

Enjoy the weekend – it’s going to be beautiful!!

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Funny isn’t it – how we never seem to be happy with the weather. Without a doubt this has been on of the most beautiful summers on record here in Minnesota. Day after day of wonderful blue sky days and moderate temps. But many times when you comment to someone about the beuatiful day the response is, “We sure could use some rain though.” or “A little cool for August isn’t it.” I wonder why that is? Is it in our nature to find fault – to complain? I’m pretty sure it’s in mine, (just ask Kate) but I’m working hard to correct that attitude. (Please bear with me during this remodeling project;-)

But, today was another glorious day – no matter what else I might say!! May we all enjoy a wonderful fall season.

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Here’s a weekend bonus image – but not from the comfort of my own backyard. As usual Kate and I met the siblings on the southeast corner of 3rd Avenue and 7th Street NE – our fireworks spot for the last several years.

My Dad loved fireworks and  would’ve flipped out at this year’s spectacular! The grand finale was incredible!! Thanks so much to Andy’s Liquor and Joe Powers/Canadian Honker as well as the other sponsors of this year’s show. We are lucky to have those businesses and people in our town!

Odd that you can actually be too close to fireworks for good photos. In most of my images the explosion went outside the frame – and I was using a 24mm lens! (actually a 36mm on a Nikon digital camera). So . . . this multi-burst image is courtesy of a little Photoshop manipulation. Thought it might be neat to get a night-time skyline image of downtown and place these bursts over the buildings.

Hope your weekend was grand!

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What a great way to spend a weekend afternoon – the 2009 St. Paul Summer Beer Fest held in the parking lot of Midway stadium. Midway stadium is home field for the St. Paul Saints baseball team and is just a block or two south of the state fairgrounds. Easy to find, easy to get and plenty of parking.

I guess there’s also a Fall Beer Fest and this was the first summer event. Fifty different craft breweries from around the country were represented. You get a tasting glass – about twice as large as a shot glass – as part of your ticket price. Then you just walk around and sample whatever beer you’d like to try.

The variety is endless – from blueberry and apricot wheat ales, to pepper flavored IPA’s, coffee flavored porters and oatmeal chocolate stouts. As you can imagine there are some you’d rather never taste again. But it’s always fun to try new beers and we all (except our daughter in-law Kelly who’s pregnant) came away with a couple new favorites we’ll look for in the stores.

It was a gorgeous mostly sunny day with a decent breeze to keep us cool. And as always, we hit the Nook for a great burger before heading home.

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Getting a head start on my weekend bonus images. If you’re “into” photography, as I obviously am, maybe you’ll find these weekend images interesting.

Photography is all about seeing light. During an outdoor portrait session I am constantly looking for “light”. It’s direction, it’s color, it’s intensity. With that in mind I thought this little weekend project might turn into something fun and informative. Could I – could you – take two original images each weekend – from the comfort of our backyards.

Last weekend it was flowers. This evening Kate and I sat on our deck enjoying an after work cocktail and a really tasty Cobb Salad. We live two doors west of a water tower and I always enjoy watching the late evening light hit the side of the tower.

So here’s the Saturday image – a few hours early.

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This image of Abby was created using our new “french window set”. She’s a “huge” reader and brought lots of books to her session. I like the story-telling quality of this image and the all white works well with Abby’s soft pink dress.

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This image is actually from Monday but I couldn’t resist – I think it’s awesome. We were down along the river behind the studio and decided to use the pattern in the concret wall to create some interest in the image. I had Cory look up and the bright light reflecting off the back of the courthouse really made his eyes – POP!!!

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